Blog Comments : When it is Useful and Harmful?

Being a blogger and a human we mistake and we learn from it. This is something which is very common in blogging, as with time we learn things, and we improve on it. In my blogging journey, I have learned many things the hard way. Some by self-realization and some by people suggesting me. By the end of the day, it’s easier to see what works out and what now.

Amit have already shared a handy Blog commenting guide for Bloggers to generate backlinks but how about those blog comments which we get on our blog. What can we do about it?

Have you ever thought all those nice and sugar coated comments that you are getting might not be so useful and may hurt your blog more. Here I will reason out some of the advantages and disadvantages of blog comments and probably you can learn from my mistakes and make appropriate changes in your comment accepting policies.

Benefits of Blog comments:

So, first understand why it is important for any blogger to get comments and how it’s going to help in SEO and branding

SEO Benefits:

Google indexes comments on any page and recently they have made their bots smart enough to index Fb comments if you have implemented. A useful comment on your post helps in increasing the keyword variation, and it makes your blog more reachable for long tail Keywords.

Example: if I write about SEO guide and some commentator comments with more useful information’s like LSI, Social media promotion, Google authorship which is modern day SEO technique, this add more useful information to my post and also helps in ranking for long tail keywords like “modern SEO +Social media promotion” and so on.

Trust & Popularity:

Social media share count helps in showing new visitor that readers trust this blog, and that’s why people share its content. Though the real popularity and Ego boost comes only when you are getting meaningful comments.

It usually takes 2-3 hours to come up with a well-researched post and to get a one line comment is more like hey I just acknowledged you, whereas meaningful blog comments will help in better engagement and bring conversation and discussion to your blog post.

Disadvantages of accepting Blog comments:

Let me clear out that I don’t mean you should not accept comments, but you should be strict about your comment policy. Let me help you out here with my views and later on you can add your opinion on the same.

Increases Spam:

Many webmasters buy blog commenting services to add comments on their blog. There is no second thought, adding blog comments on the different domain will help your blog in the long run and we have already seen how it helped me to get PR 3. So there is no doubt, commenting helps you to pass link-juice.

Now, when you accept comments like “Nice post” “Wow an awesome guide” “I landed on this blog for searching for “%Post title%” and I really liked it and I’m going to subscribe to your blog right away”, it doesn’t add value to your post and also your outbound link cycle will be disrupted. I have noticed it late but if you know of “Related Google operator”, you will realize what I meant. Here the is related report for ShoutMeLoud and most of the related links which Google has determined here comes using Blog commenting.

This is one of my biggest mistakes to accept all the comments in the past, which doesn’t add any value. I’m not saying they were spam, but they didn’t add any value to the post. My suggestion: If you are accepting such comments which doesn’t add any value, simply reject them. Also, have a policy to accept comments only with the real name and now like “SEO Brisbane” “SEO India” and so on. A genuine commentator knows the importance of using a name or brand name for the personal touch. Is, isn’t it?

You lose genuine commentator:

When I see a great post, and I think of adding comment there, I see 10-20 comments like “Great post” “Useful posts” and so on and I don’t find worth wasting my 5-10 minutes of time to add a kickass comment. I would rather jump to some other blog where real commentators are participating and engaging. What about you? Do you comment on such blogs?

Database Size:

How many of you complaints about increasing database size and site going down without much traffic. Believe it, it mostly happens due to enormously huge database size and keeping such useless blog comments away from your blog, you helping your blog. Though, just in case if you are not aware you need to keep cleaning your wp_comments table to remove all spam comments cached by Akismet.

Solution to such bogus comments:

One easy and quick solution is to implement 3rd party services like Facebook commenting system which requires user to comment using their Facebook comments and no one would like to spoil their social media presence and also you will get rid of those comments which come from Blog commenting services and software’s like Scrapebox.

Another solution is to implement comment by registration only, and this will help you to get genuine readers register your site and add value. You may offer various registration options like Facebook, Twitter and so on. Most of the popular sites, which get lots of comment are using the same method. This not only helps in eradicating spam comments but also your outbound link will be controlled.

Here are few things which I look before accepting comments:

Name and link (Spam or real)

Is the Comment meaningful?

Is the link in comment adding value or not?

None the less, at times I also check spam comment tab to recover all those genuine comments which have been marked by Akismet as spam. Believe it, years back I used to love the fact that I’m getting 50+ comments on all blog post, but I realize it was not as good as I thought. Infect, it not only devalue my outbound links but also uselessly increasing my page load time. Many bloggers suggest disabling comments on old blog posts, but I would not advocate that in ever case, as Blogging is all about one to many interactions where readers also share their opinion and reaction via comments.

More over, if you are still thinking why you should not accept such blog comments, here is food of thought: There are always like,share and tweets button which a reader can always use to show their appreciations.

Open question to all Webmasters: What’s your comment accepting policy? Do you accept all the comments or you are also particular about what comments goes live on your blog?

Subscribe on Youtube

A blog scientist by the mind and a passionate blogger by heart ❤️. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud (Award winning blog), speaker at various international forums.Life motto: Live while you can! Teach & inspire while you could & Smile while you have the teeth.

I came here trying to search whether blog comments with links to my website is good or bad for seo of my site but i realized that this article is meant for webmasters for monitoring comments on their own site. Anyways this is a nice read. Its funny to see how in this age and time people are still trying to leave useless comments on other blogs which are not even related to their niche and still hoping to get an advantage. google is smart enough to detect that whether your comment is actually adding any value to the web post you left it on and whether your website is from the same niche as the website you have left the comment on. Anyways i learnt a lot reading through your post.

I got more and more comments at initial stage my blogging. They linked their website with each comment, so that will be create outbound link on my website. After that i felt like why we should link to other sites and i removed the code for adding anchor tag over the user name. That’s it from the next day i didnt get any comments and my page visits also reduced automatically. I’m wondering how it happening? if they can create outbound link on my website means they are commenting otherwise they will be shifting to other websites to harm their site also. Here i want to ask a question. i can see in the comment section some commentator name linked with some website and some commentator not linked to. So you removing it by code as it irrelevant or user itself not entering their website when they posting comments? Please answer my question and delete this comment after that no problem for me. It will be useful to implement such thing for my website.

I usually block all comments that don’t add any sort of value similar to what you are suggesting. I have to work hard for my SEO, and so should they! It is good to know that all my hard work keeping my comments pristine can be helping me with search rankings as well.

When the commenter fill in all forms and enters the link back to his website, does that harms my website SEO? For example instead of his Name: he puts his company or website. Should i accept such comments or not?

It depends. Generally, it is highly advisable if you accept comments with Names only. However, if the comment is of high quality and very relevant then, you can accept comments with website or company’s name.

hey harsh, Yes, I don’t accept single word comment. I have one question, is commenting in other niche is good or bad? If you comment on the post that’s not related to your niche, is it spam or not? I know its little childish.

It depends. If you are commenting something which is totally unrelated to the post, then, of course, it is considered as spam. However, if you are reading something which you really like and you want to comment on it, definitely go ahead. Well, everything should not boil down to your blog, sometimes you should do things just to enjoy and you want to. I hope that makes sense.

I’m a blogger and have been for over a year, this post has helped me understand comments and commenting, thank you so much for making it all so clear. I’ve been sticking to the rules and using no follow links. My DA score is only 12 which is rubbish but I have only been posting once a week as I also work full time and my blogs are not my full time job. I hardly have comments but I haven’t been commenting on others. I understand I now need to spend more time taking time to comment well on others to help my score. I do have lots of reads but people just don’t comment. I know it takes time to build up trust with your readers and it’s important to build a relationship so they actually want to comment. I have many years ahead of me and a long way to go. I will keep working hard to get more comments.